>> I want people to know a whole bunch about prisons that they
probably don't know.
Because most stuff they see on TV, the information that they get,
is probably not true.
I think that, also too, some of the best and
brightest people In this country, you find them in prison.
I mean, some of the best people I know, I'm telling you, are in prison.
I'm talking about in terms of their values, their mores and
all these different things that we attribute to so-called good character and
whatever you want to say.
You'll find loyalty and the whole nine yards,
but I think that in society, I mean,
when I was kind of touching a little bit about,
I mean, this whole issue about mass incarceration.
I mean, a lot of that kind of took place because
you have this kind of more silence, and so
you just kind of have this whole proliferation in the system.
And the point of that is, everything that we're talking about, and so much more with
respect to how prison actuallys affect people and relationships and life.
But I think that in terms of, I mean, even on death row, for instance,
that most people in society believe that the worst of the worst
people are sitting on death row.
And the reality is, it's really not,
I mean, I got people that I consider family,
they're sitting on death row.
There's a guy over there, a good friend of mine, 18 years old, playing with a gun,
actually killed his girlfriend, because he didn't understand the process,
like you were saying, about being 18 years old.
He had just turned 18 years old, and because he didn't understand the process,
and chose to exercise his right to a trial, which is what he was entitled to.
But then the system felt like, okay,
since you want to do this we are going to seek the death penalty against you,
and actually got it, and he's still sitting on death row now.
But, I mean, the truth is that, and
I ain't saying you shouldn't have a death penalty period.
But hell, when I got off of death row, I was in the cell with a person that,
he was convicted of killing four people.
He was never subject to the death penalty,
because of the county he happened to come out of.
And like I said, I ain't saying that he should have been.
But this idea that people sitting there in prison,
some people that we should somehow just write off.
Then like I said, I think that people that's listening, I mean,
we have to understand that first off, most people,
over 90% of the people sitting in prison, coming home.
And we gotta decide as a society how we going to welcome them back,
because they coming home.
And so you can't sit somebody in the cell, you can't sit somebody in the cell for
23, sometimes 24, hours a day, like she said.
And come by, antagonize them, throw piss on them, just the same way in
the city are throwing it on them, and do all these different things.
And somehow think that when this person's time is up, you can let them out, and
they're going to come out and be productive people, and
do everything to their fullest potential in life that we hope that they could.
I mean,
you basically just sending a ticking time bomb back out wherever they came from.
And eventually, it's going to explode, and usually,
it's against the people that's right next door.
I mean, sometimes it goes down the street or off the block, or whatever the case is.
But a lot of the stuff that you see in terms of how this stuff plays out,
it's against the people that they're living in the house with.